Opinion

There has certainly been a lot of debate about Web Experience Management. Some analysts like Janus Boye have called it "meaningless vendor jargon". Some others like Scott Liewehr of Gilbane have said that understanding Web Engagement Management is "crucial to your business". Forrester has attempted to create its own definition – calling it "customer experience management". And, finally, others such as Julie Hunt – have written how Web Engagement Management even extends into the intranet of Enterprise 2.0 – and how content should be utilized to engage employees.

So here’s my take on it:

The trend in Web Content Management for the last couple of years has been Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - and it was all about getting your audience to your site. Period. Just make sure they find you. But then what? What happens once they get there? How do you keep them on your site? How do you make sure they come back later, how do you get them to start doing business on your site? How do you make your visitors fall in love with your site?

That’s Web Experience Management. It’s whatever comes after they’ve found you.

The 1994 Knight-Ridder video I attached at the bottom of this post  is a fantastic reminder that the tablet predates the iPad and Android tablet by many decades. During the "hypermedia" era of the late 1980's, I can recall taking a "tech of the future" class where my professor discussed in similar detail what a tablet might look like in the future. He described a day where students would be sitting under trees reading not from paper books but utilizing exactly what we know today as the digital tablet. 

 Believe it or not though, the origins of the tablet computer date back to the 19th century.

"The history of science and technology suggests that such absolutism on both sides of a scientific debate doesn't often lead to practical solutions."

-Daniel B. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment, "Absolute Certainty Is Not Scientific", Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2011

Last weekend, digital agency water&stone, released their 2011 Open Source CMS Market Share Report. I consider this report one of the few non-bias and detailed surveys that come across my desk each year. The report isn't perfect, but the report does help give a good snapshot on the state of who's who in the world of open source content management systems.

You are most definitely going to want to take a look at the details in the report. The findings in this year’s report were based on a survey of more than 2,500 CMS users and additional research into a wide variety of measures of market share and brand strength. I'm still combing through the survey and taking note of the interesting individual nuggets of information that can be found in the results of the survey.

Not surprisingly, the report confirms the ranking position of open source's three most dominate Web content management systems in the market. The press release itself summarizes the results this way:

PHP-based systems WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal continue to dominate the web content management space. But, while the Big Three remain unchanged from last year, the Report concludes that WordPress retains a clear lead in the face of decreasing competition from Joomla!.

The decreasing competition from Joomla! can be seen most noticeably in the decrease of installations reported by the survey respondents in 2011 compared to 2010. The survey does note that this dramatic drop is likely due to the Joomla! community aggressively promoting the survey last year. This year, the promotion efforts were not coordinated and less influential. I only point this out because this is an example of where the report isn't "perfect" via inconsistencies in the yearly survey sample introducing  a margin of error in the trend comparisons. 

A couple weeks ago, Liferay's marketing and communication folks sent me an email mentioning that Liferay was included as a "Leader" in Gartner's 2011 Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. After my usual procrastination I finally got around to reading the report and what follows in this blog post are some impressions that jumped at me while reading the report. I'm not convinced the randomness of these personal thoughts make up a blog post (at least a well-written blog post) but I'm going for it since my public note taking often turns out better than a well polished article.

At this moment, I have a tall stack of unread books related to content management systems sitting in front me. Publishers and authors apparently like my review style because new books continue to be sent my way. However, reading a book from cover to cover for a review (the last one being six months ago) takes time and I just haven't been able to keep up with the required reading. So with admission that I haven't read every page of these books, I've decided to at least start posting mini-reviews of select books and hoping that this move is still a win-win-win for publishers, authors and readers.

Dana Blakenhorn is one of the keynote speakers here at Liferay West Coast Symposium. He's probably one of the most non-Liferay speakers at this symposium giving him the perfect opportunity to express new ideas to this community of Liferay developers, partners, and users. I love these "strength of weak-ties" guests in conferences as it allows for some people in this crowd to "get it" and run with it.

The description for his talk:

Using Facebook and Twitter, Steve Burge has compiled a list of social media responses to the question, "Why does Joomla rock?". It's an interesting list of 40 tweets and FB status messages and he's conveniently categorized the responses into short answers to the question.

Why does Joomla Rock?

I have used Google+ for about a week and I like it. Compared to other social networking solutions I found it instantly useful, with a clean design. When I started using Facebook it took quite some time to get a grip on what the benefits was for me, but for Google+ I didn't have to look as they were very visible directly.

Accrisoft. A few months ago, I knew little about Accrisoft or their flagship product, Accrisoft Freedom CMS. In early May, CMS Report met with the company for the first time and it was a great opportunity for me to get to know them better. Accrisoft is a company that anybody who is somebody in the content management business definitely needs to get to know better.

It's not that often I become quickly enthralled with a company and their products. Yet, for the past couple months I can't help but think of the first demo I saw of Accrisoft's CMS. It wasn't just the genius simplicity of their blue/green user interface for users and developers that I'm obsessing about either. It is the fact that Accrisoft convinced me it's not only users that need to rethink how websites are managed, but also the many site owners and developers that incorrectly think they don't need a company like Accrisoft.

Accrisoft is a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) Web applications and they definitely made a big splash at last Spring's 2011 CMS Expo. During the expo, I was able to meet up with Accrisoft's CEO, Jeff Kline, as well as their chief technology officer, Mark Zeitler. It wasn't just their product, Accrisoft Freedom CMS, that won me over that day but also their enthusiasm and  technical vision of what the future holds for web content management.

If Accrisoft isn't on your radar it is time to put it there. For the last five years I've focused most of my attention on CMSs that individuals and organizations are more likely to manage and host themselves. Quite frankly, a portion of my DNA is old-school IT and I've stubbornly been unyielding to any notion of running a content management system in the cloud. I've always wanted to maintain as much control as I could on the servers that host my CMS. Control of your IT assets is a good thing, isn't it? The talk of the cloud is just slick marketing talk, isn't it? Accrisoft, as well as Acquia, have persuaded me to believe that it makes perfect business and technical sense to utilize SaaS CMS.